Intellichoice.com 2008 Hybrid Survey

Once a car is driven off the lot, there are seven areas that determine how much consumers will pay for that car, beyond the sticker price. These factors are: depreciation, financing, fuel, insurance, maintenance, repairs and state fees. These are the cost factors that IntelliChoice.com has tracked and analyzed in every vehicle on the road for the past 20 years. By determining a vehicle’s long-term ownership costs, IntelliChoice.com is able to assess which cars, trucks and SUVs offer consumers the best overall value.

IntelliChoice.com looked at the 24 different 2008 model year hybrid vehicles and selected a comparable non-hybrid vehicle. In some cases, selecting a comparable vehicle is difficult because feature configurations between hybrids and non-hybrids can differ. In the case of the Toyota Prius, for instance, there is no non-hybrid Prius, so a low end Toyota Camry was selected as the comparable vehicle.

Also, hybrid and non-hybrid vehicles of the same model line can come with slightly different equipment packages. Overall, though, pitting hybrid models versus non-hybrids yields interesting findings when examining total five-year ownership costs...